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Today we don't have a lot of news, we just want to tell you that the work on 3.001 update is near its end. We have 20 Career mission types working of 25 planned for the release. The most of the initially found issues are fixed and some tweaks are already in the place.

To give you a general idea of the scale of this update, its change list will contain 90 items, nearly a third of which are significant changes and improvements. The sheer number of these changes means that after 3.001 release hotfixes will likely follow because there could be problems that couldn't be found by the testers. We're sure this teething period will be short.

P-39L-1 cockpit is almost ready, perhaps we'll spend 1-2 days for final 'polishing' of its textures, but we can already show you its overall look.

All other changes and additions planned for 3.001 release are finished. Therefore, we plan to release this humongous update in 2-3 weeks. We want to release it as soon as possible ourselves: all we're doing we're doing for you and your feedback is very important for us. But we need to make a bit more effort to give you the result that will not only be massive, but also good functioning, so these days will be spent on debugging and refinement of the new functionality.

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We spent the two weeks since the previous release on intensive work on important aspects of the project. In the not-too-distant future, we'll be adding some huge new features for our Early Access titles, so we've decided to take some time and concentrate on several smaller, but important and long-awaited improvements and create this update.

The main feature of this release is revised airframe damage modeling - an important part of the damage system. Airframe damage system was completely overhauled to take into account additional parameters. The damage modeling as a whole was tuned and improved and bugs fixed - you can read the entire list below.

There is large amount of changes and improvements in aircraft systems, their model and the AI. We added the new British pilot model to the sim and all Bodenplatte and Flying Circus pilots can now take their oxygen masks and goggles on and off. Multiplayer improvements also continue since the last version too. There are new performance optimizations for sea maps. Users who encountered stutters using Microsoft Force Feedback joysticks and TrackIR now have an option to tune FFB effect polling frequency using the additional setting in startup.cfg file.

For mission designers we added a way to control Timer and Counter values dynamically. To do this, there are two new logical objects Modifier: Add Val and Modifier: Set Val. We plan to widely use them to alter various triggers in the future, but at the moment they can be used for:
- modifying a Timer trigger value. A modifier can set, add or substract the time value in a timer by using the 0 index of the controllable value and 1-st field of the value vector. When set to a negative value, the time counter is reset and the timer stops until the next input. For example, this can be used to reset and stop a timer in a mission, delaying some events tied to it.
- modifying a Counter trigger value and threshold (initiall set in a mission). To alter a Counter value, use the 0 index of the controllable value or alter Counter threshold using the 1-st index. For example, a certain mission event like a premature elimination of some targets can lower the threshold of a Counter to make sure the others are eliminated at the moment the player arrives to the waypoint.

Main features:
1. Late war British pilot added to Spitfire Mk.IXe;
2. New control elements added to mission logic (useful for mission designers): "Modifier: Add Val" and "Modifier: Set Val". They can alter the values of other logical elements - Counter and Timer (when used with a Timer object, Set Val can input a negative value to reset and stop a Timer);
3. Force Feedback joystick owners who experience stutters can alter the new value in startup.cfg that governs the maximum frequency of FFB effects polling to try to eliminate them (update_freq parameter in [KEY = force_feedback] section can be set to a value from 0.5 Hz to 10 Hz, example: update_freq = 10.0);
4. Additional renderer optimizations for sea maps (Kuban, Bodenplatte in the future) allowed to boost performance on such maps even more;
5. AA searchlights now can follow Attack Area command which can be used to limit their search area and/or use them as visible beacons (useful for mission designers);
6. Multiplayer: 'allow other players to man stations' option now saved;
7. Multiplayer: various issues like statistics 'freezing', inability to start a mission, kill messages disappearing were fixed for high-load servers;
8. Multiplayer: missing AP hit sound effects and some other sounds restored;
9. A rare crash that could happen in high load situations like joint air-ground engagements with many units has been fixed;
10. keep_binary_log = 0 option in startup.cfg correctly removes binary logs from the game folder on exit;
11. Career: mission area correctly set while escorting transport planes in Stalingrad TOW;
12. Incorrect navigational markers won't be shown in a mission without player aircraft;

Damage model improvements:
13. P-47D-28, Yak-7b and Spitfire Mk.IXe wings made less fragile when damaged;
14. Aileron control rods correctly damaged when Yak-7b, P-39L-1 or P-47 wing is damaged;
15. An overdone HE explosion effect on the primary structure of an aircraft has been reduced.
16. Damage calculations of the airframe take a hit angle into account;
17. Damage from direct hits and explosions on the skin and control rods has been tuned;
18. Minor visual damage correctly appears after a first hit;
19. The visual damage of a cockpit glass correctly appears after a first hit there;
20. Ju-52 instruments can be damaged now;
21. Aircraft primary structure won't erroneously receive double damage in case of hits on the internal components like fuel tanks, engine, radiators, etc.);
22. Airframe sturdiness tuned for all aircraft;
23. Armor of the internal components corrected whenever it was wrong;
24. P-47D-28 wing damage corrected (wing loss is preceded with a wing crack);
25. A weapon won't fire if its ammo supply was lost with a wing part;
26. Fuel tank fire probability corrected for Flying Circus aircraft;
27. Ammo detonation effects differ visually depending on the explosion power;

Original Message is from ShamrockOneFive posted over at Il2 Forums. It was posted in April, but right now it is a good time to reread it and maybe, buy it as an xmas gift for yourself

Hey folks,

I spent some serious time with IL-2: Battle of Kuban and particularly with patch 3.001 before I started to write my review. I decided I wanted to write a review for new players coming in or old players that were used to IL-2: 1946 so that they would have an idea of what this series is all about. I didn't want to hide the few warts that the series still has but I also wanted to put them in context of all of the great things that it does so well.

At a little over 4,500 words I think I've captured nearly all of my main thoughts and feelings on the recent final release of the title and I try and cover as much ground as possible. This review isn't so much for you guys as it is for new players coming in. In short, I think IL-2: Battle of Kuban is a crowning achievement for 1CGS and one that points towards a very bright future for the series.

Today we'd like to dedicate our Dev Blog to the tank part of our sim. We attempt not only to create the authentic visual models of the tanks and model their movement, armament, and damage realistically. We also want to create an interesting gameplay, based on historical events, as usual, that will not only entertain you for some time but let you experience what a real tank warfare in a meeting engagement situation was like.

The air part of our sim started at the great battle of WWII that changed its course and the course of world history, the Battle of Stalingrad. Following this principle, we start the tank part with one of the key tank battles on the Eastern front that decided the entire 1943 campaign - Prokhorovka.

Beginning the campaign development for "Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka" we faced the fact that a usual, common for flight sims approach just won't work - its unlikely that any single tank crew in July 1943 survived several large-scale engagements in a row (especially a Soviet one) and participated in all key points of the large Prokhorovka battle we'd like to reconstruct in our scenarios.

Therefore we have decided not to link the scenarios with a personal story of one of the tank crewmen, but concentrate on creating a coherent story about July 6 -17 engagements. The mission briefings will include first-person remarks, but there will be several plot lines. This will allow you to experience the battle of Prokhorovka from several locations and command 2-3 different combat vehicles in the course of one campaign.

"Breaking point" (tentative title)
Soviet campaign

This campaign will be dedicated to the heroic deed of Soviet tankmen of Rotmistrov 5th Guards Tank Army that disrupted the German offensive at the center of the southern part of the Kursk salient at the cost of their lives. The massive, but poorly prepared counterblow on July 12th stopped the German advance and eventually pushed them back to their initial positions. The later missions of the campaign will cover the subsequent, less known stage of the battle of Kursk on July 13th - 15th at the interfluve of Donets river.

This campaign will tell about the operations of the tank units of Army Group South during Operation Citadel. Having breached two army defense lines, German forces reached Prokhorovka as early as at the evening of July 6th and were close to capturing this key area. However, instead of continuing their advance they were forced to defend against numerous Soviet counterstrikes that culminated in the massive battle on July 12th. The second part of the campaign will be dedicated to German attempts to encircle and destroy Soviet 48th Corps at interfluve of Donets river and the forced retreat of the German 2nd Tank Corps to initial positions when the entire offensive failed.

To make our feature about Tank Crew – Clash at Prokhorovka more visual, we can show you several WIP screenshots of the new tanks made by our partners - Digital Forms. They are planned to be released in Early Access early next year:
- T-34-76 mod. 1943 produced by Nizhny Tagyl tank factory #183 in name of Communist International ("Uralvagonzavod") and
- Panzerkampfwagen IV (Sd.Kfz.161) Asufuehrung G produced by Nibelungenwerke of St. Valentin

To accompany them, here are WIP screenshots of Prokhorovka map being developed by our mapping team. The new landscape scaling tech has been developed specially for this map - by reducing the total size of the map from 400x400 km to 100x100km we were able to make its heightmap 16 times more detailed. The detailed area of the Prokhorovka map is still in development, but other parts of this map are more polished. We'd like to note that it is suitable not only for tank engagements, but also for aerial ones and, of course, for joint multiplayer battles that unfold both on the ground and in the air simultaneously. To illustrate this, today we can show you the views of Belgorod that is also there:

Aaand we are delighted to present you the finished tankmen models. We still need to animate an each crew member in each player controllable tank in the sim, but now you can already see how they will look: